Immigration enforcement awareness and community engagement with police: Evidence from domestic violence calls in Los Angeles
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Abstract
The unwillingness of Latino and immigrant communities to interact with the police or report crime is a recognized concern of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Using data on calls for service dispatched to LAPD patrols from 2014 through 2017, we assess if heightened awareness of immigration enforcement, as captured by a novel Google Trends index on related searches, is associated with reduced calls to report domestic violence in predominately Latino noncitizen neighborhoods. We find that domestic violence calls per capita dropped in LAPD reporting districts with a higher concentration of Latino noncitizens as awareness about immigration enforcement increased. The decline provides empirical evidence of the “chilling effect” of immigration enforcement on Latino immigrant engagement with the police, underscoring the need to engage communities increasingly alienated by federal immigration policy.
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Ashley Muchow
Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Justice
Dr. Muchow’s research empirically examines how law and policy affect the lives of marginalized populations, with a particular focus on the intersection of immigration and criminal law – specifically, its enforcement and resulting impact on minority communities. Her dissertation research used theories of social stratification and racial and ethnic inequality to disentangle how enforced exclusions and the criminalization of immigrants stymie integration and jeopardize public safety. Using predominately quasi-experimental methods, her research seeks to disentangle how enforced exclusions and the merging of immigration and criminal law influence legal processes and impact social integration.